If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking the
link above. You may have to register
before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages,
select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

Outrage and confusion over atheist scientist Richard Dawkins’ recent comments about “mild pedophilia” continue to abound. His contentious statements were made in a recent Times Magazine interview during which he discussed the sexual abuse he experienced as a child.
In his upcoming autobiography, the 72-year-old evolutionary biologist described his own ordeal, noting that he does not believe that it had a lasting impact on his life. His comments on the matter, of course, have created quite a bit of contention among experts and advocates who feel that what Dawkins said is patently damaging and wrong-headed.Headliner Richard Dawkins, founder of The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science, spoke during the National Atheist Organization’s ‘Reason Rally’ March 24, 2012 on the National Mall in Washington, DC. Credit: Getty Images North America

In the Times interview, he recalled how one of his former school masters once put him on his knee and “put his hand inside” of his shorts. Here’s how the event is written about in his coming memoir, “An Appetite for Wonder” (as per the Friendly Atheist blog):

One day — I must have been about 11 — there was a master in the gallery with me. He pulled me onto his knee and put his hand inside my shorts. He did no more than have a little feel, but it was extremely disagreeable (the cremasteric reflex is not painful, but in a skin-crawling, creepy way it is almost worse than painful) as well as embarrassing. As soon as I could wriggle off his lap, I ran to tell my friends, many of whom had had the same experience with him. I don’t think he did any of us any lasting damage, but some years later he killed himself.

Clearly a traumatic event, the atheist took a different take on how it should be understood.

“I am very conscious that you can’t condemn people of an earlier era by the standards of ours,” Dawkins told the Times. Just as we don’t look back at the 18th and 19th centuries and condemn people for racism in the same way as we would condemn a modern person for racism, I look back a few decades to my childhood and see things like caning, like mild pedophilia, and can’t find it in me to condemn it by the same standards as I or anyone would today.”
Then, he added that he believes that the experience didn’t do him or any of the other students who were abused by the teacher “lasting harm.” The Daily Mail adds that Dawkins also essentially distinguished between varying levels of pedophilia.” In the scientist’s view, “mild touching up” should not be compared to other violent acts that include rape and murder.
The interview and his comments almost instantaneously sparked angst and outrage.http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013...ms-amid-furor/

The difference between pigs and people is that when they tell you you're cured it isn't a good thing.

Perhaps his point was that children suffer all sorts of abuse at the hands of adults, with varying degrees of harm. My first grade teacher was Amish and about as cold as she could be. She said and did some stupid things, including punishing children for "reading ahead". Despite that and the fact that she was boring, I still helped her plant strawberries and have fond memories of her. She's dead now. My second grade teacher was a total bitch who loved prissy little girls and hated little boys. She said things to me that no adult, much less a teacher, should ever say to a child. I ran into her many years later and had a few words with her. She's dead now. I was at a church bazaar one year when my dad's boss addressed me with a personal insult. He said, "How you doing , Chubby?" Taking his cue, and never imagining that an adult would be an insulting petty asshole, I responded , "Not bad, Baldy." Try to imagine what a piece of shit a person would have to be to call a child "Chubby" and then make a big deal out of it when he returns the favor. As with all of my enemies, he's dead now.

Perhaps his point was that children suffer all sorts of abuse at the hands of adults, with varying degrees of harm. My first grade teacher was Amish and about as cold as she could be. She said and did some stupid things, including punishing children for "reading ahead". Despite that and the fact that she was boring, I still helped her plant strawberries and have fond memories of her. She's dead now. My second grade teacher was a total bitch who loved prissy little girls and hated little boys. She said things to me that no adult, much less a teacher, should ever say to a child. I ran into her many years later and had a few words with her. She's dead now. I was at a church bazaar one year when my dad's boss addressed me with a personal insult. He said, "How you doing , Chubby?" Taking his cue, and never imagining that an adult would be an insulting petty asshole, I responded , "Not bad, Baldy." Try to imagine what a piece of shit a person would have to be to call a child "Chubby" and then make a big deal out of it when he returns the favor. As with all of my enemies, he's dead now.